This week when we spent some time in the “outskirts” of the bush of Africa, the Lord took some time to reiterate some very important things in my mind that He has taught me many times before already. A little over a year ago, He taught me about the importance of listening for His voice. When I finally was quiet in a time of prayer, He spoke to me in new ways that I have never experienced. All He needed was an opportunity to talk to me and He definitely took advantage of the first time I was quiet while still in the posture of prayer. That time of prayer is what eventually led me onto the race. (I think I wrote about this in one of my first blogs, so I won’t retell the whole story.)
Anyway, the Lord spoke in two distinct moments on the trip, then He spoke again on the Sunday morning after we got back. I will tell you about these three moments. Hopefully these instances will help you start to listen for His voice, because He definitely still speaks….
1- While our truck was broken down on the side of the road, our contact said that we were supposed to do a service for the people in the village as soon as we got there. I questioned that statement since it was already 9:00 PM and it looked like we probably would not get there until at least 10:00 PM. Either way, I figured that it would be a good idea to have something prepared in either case. As we got into the truck for the hour remaining drive I started to ask the Lord where He would have me look in my Bible for a word to these people. Almost instantaneously I heard Him say to turn to Matthew 18. So I proceeded to check it out. There are a few different stories in this chapter, but my mind was drawn to the last section; the story about the forgiving king and the unforgiving servant. I started to build a sermon off of those verses. I quickly constructed a three point sermon (Remember, I grew up in a Southern Baptist church….haha). The concepts were forgiveness, love, and community. I was going to talk about how these three concept are intertwined into strengthening and growing the church. Well, it turns out we did not do a service that night, so I pocketed the message. The next morning I woke up and started chatting with our contact before breakfast. I was the only person awake from our group so we had a little time to chat before anything needed to be done. Pretty much right off the bat he told me that his heart ached for the community we were in. He said that there are a lot of men and women that want to rise up and be leaders in the church, but the people already in the position of leadership will not help empower them and bring them up. At about this moment the Holy Spirit slapped me in the face as a reminder about the message that was in my pocket from the night before. What he said exactly coincided with what the Lord had put in my mind the night before. When I heard this, I knew that I would be preaching at the service for the village we were in later that evening. Throughout the day, the Lord kept adding to the message and giving me good points to talk about. It is unusual to go into a service with a solid outline for the message you are going to preach. Usually the Spirit just downloads it all at once then you just go with it. I preached the message and both of our contacts in charge told me that the message was exactly what the community needed to hear. It was pretty incredible to see the Spirit move like that. It was definitely the Lord moving, because the passages I preached from, definitely would not have been the first ones my mind would have gone to.
2- In the last service before we headed home, almost everyone in the group was completely exhausted (myself included). We sat in the chairs they had set up for us, and if we wanted to, we could have fallen asleep in about 30 seconds. Since we had about 200 people watching us, that would not have been a good idea. The church began their intense worship session like usual. There was a lot of singing, dancing, and rejoicing like always. I just sat around as a spectator because I was so tired. The Lord then came in and said, “You don’t have to sit here.” Basically, He said that if I got up and danced and worshipped with the people that He would reward me and renew my energy. I took a minute or two to digest this and then I decided to follow His voice because I really had nothing to lose. Almost as soon as I stood up my whole body felt renewed. I felt better and had more energy than I had the whole time on this trip. Just by simply standing up and joining these people’s worship the Lord restored my energy and allowed me to have an excellent last service before we headed back to Zomba.
3- Almost every morning, I get together with my teammate Colby to read the Bible and spend some time in prayer. I woke up Sunday morning with no particular passage in my head to bring to the table. I talked to the Lord for a little while, then I asked if He had anything that He wanted us to read this morning. As soon as I asked, Isaiah 61 came into my head. I did not know anything that was in there, so I figured that it was of the Lord. I did not read it right away, I just saved it until Colby and I read it together. Well, Isaiah 61 is just the Lord’s declaration over His followers. He tells us who we are and how people will react to the calling He has put on our lives. Colby said that he had woken up with an overwhelming sense of responsibility to serve the Lord and an overwhelming sense of the fear of the Lord. This passage pretty much answers both of those feelings. These verses quickly answered and affirmed the things that he was feeling. Right after we were done praying, he began to write a blog about the verses we had just read. About an hour later, we were picked up to head to church. On the way, the pastor asked who was going to preach the message. In typical World Race fashion, I said, “I don’t know, but I know one of us will.” He laughed nervously and said that we would have a meeting when we got to his church to figure out who would preach. When we got there the question rose up as to who was going to preach. I looked at Colby and said, “I think you have the word this morning.” He said, “I think I do too, I was just going to wait to see if anybody else had anything.” He quickly accepted the calling to preach to this congregation. He spoke out of Isaiah 61 and just spoke words of identity over this congregation that was starving to know what the Lord thought about them. It was an excellent message hand delivered by the Lord to both of us. It definitely fired up the pastor and some of the other elders. Hopefully the spark that the Word brought that morning will catch and ignite this congregation.
There you have three distinct instances where the Lord spoke over the last week. If you doubt that the Lord still speaks nowadays, sit down in a time of prayer and listen to what He has to say to you. He is waiting to speak to you, all He needs is an opportunity for you to hear Him.
